Wrigley Canada

BBDO thought Wrigley brand Skittles’ quirky, popular campaign offered an opportunity to generate earned media with engaging content. With touch technology spearheading a new generation of digital interaction, BBDO wanted to show people what happens when they actually “Touch the Rainbow.” But instead of inventing new technology, the agency created the world’s first non-technological touch tech. It asked people to touch their computer screen as their finger played a starring role in five online ads: “Cat,” “Cage Cop,” “Hitchhiker,” “War Finger” and “Skittles Girl.”

Fingers fought crime, hitchhiked, befriended cats and even went to war. The videos “magically” knew if people moved their finger away and posted text inviting them to put it back.

The videos were hosted on a branded Canadian Skittles channel on YouTube, seeded to nearly 300 blogs and linked to Skittles’ Facebook page. In addition, a masthead on the YouTube homepage ran for two days and YouTube promoted video ads ran for two weeks.

Over a month, the videos received over five million views and were featured on 2,200 blogs. The campaign rose to the top of viral video charts all over the world. In fact, it stayed at number one on AdAge’s The Top Ten Viral Video Ads Chart for two weeks. The Skittles videos elicited over 104,600 comments, 88,000 Facebook shares and 5,000 tweets. Further confidential sales results were supplied to the judges.

Skittles also had over 11,000 YouTube channel subscribers, which was more than any channel during the month of April. In total, over the month, over 60 million media impressions were earned.

And at this year’s Cannes Festival, “Cat” secured a Gold Cyber Lion while “Cat,” “Cage Cop” and “Hitchhiker” won a Gold Campaign Film Lion. The campaign was the only Canadian work chosen to be part of Google’s Creative Canvas, a collection of innovative creative as judged by Google.